When a girl's dead body is found in a toybox, forensic physician and pathologist Anya Crichton joins the police hunt in her home state of Tasmania for the girl's missing mother and sister.

Staying with her increasingly erratic mother, Dr Jocelyn Reynolds, Anya fears the long shadow of her sister Miriam's disappearance has finally driven her mother past the brink of sanity.

When tests conclude a virulent strain of food poisoning was responsible for the child's death, the deadly outbreak begins to spread. Anya pairs up with Internal Affairs detective Oliver Parke to unravel the sinister connections between the fatal epidemic, the shady deals of a multinational corporation and the alleged murder of a local scientist. Anya must uncover the truth before she is silenced - permanently.